Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Free Basic Internet Now In Nigeria As Facebook Partners With Airtel For Free Browsing

I know you are surprised and thinking if this is really true. Well, it is 100% true because it has been done in some other countries. Now it's Nigerias time to enjoy free internet courtesy of Facebook.

This wonderful innovation is welcomed in Nigeria especially in this time of total economic meltdown if only our government won't tamper with it as Egyptian government did when facebook brought this service in Egypt. When the same offer came to India, the Indian government snubbed it. Now my question is will Nigerian Government also block this wonderful development later in the future? Only time will tell.

Mark Zuckerberg who is the founder of Facebook took to his page yesterday to announce Free Basic Internet in Nigeria. In his words,

“Today we’re partnering with Airtel Africa to launch Internet.org Free Basics in Nigeria.
There's a lot of innovation across Africa right now, and Nigeria in particular is home to a lot of talented developers.

…Free Basics offers Nigerians, including 90 million people who are currently offline, the opportunity to access news, health information and services like Jobberman that were built by Nigerians and other developers across West Africa -- all without having to pay for data.
Free Basics is now live in more than 40 countries, and half of those are in Africa."

This means Nigerians can browse the Internet free of charge with their Airtel SIM card.
However, the browsing experience is not that perfect when i tested it some hours ago. The test quality is poor and in most times, images doesn't load while browsing with the free basic internet access. It browses exactly as the name suggests. It is a basic browsing stuff so it can serve better whenever you don't have data at all to browse.

Are you using this free internet at the moment? What is your experience so far? Where do you see Nigeria going soon now that facebook recognize Nigerians as one of the talented developers in the world.